What are the conclusions of Rutherford’s gold foil experiment?
● Most of the space inside an atom is empty
This is because most of the alpha particles easily passed through the atoms without getting deflected and hit the detector straight.
● The positive charge is compactly packed in an extremely small space inside the atom
Very few alpha particles deflected from their path. Moreover, only a very small fraction of the particles rebounded. This indicated that all the positive charge and mass of the atom were concentrated in a very small volume within the atom.
Alpha particles
Based on these results, Rutherford proposed an atomic model.
What is Rutherford’s atomic model?
According to Rutherford’s Atomic Model, the structure of an atom is as follows.
- There is a positively charged centre in an atom called the Nucleus. Nearly all the mass of an atom resides in the
- The electrons revolve around the nucleus in circular
- The size of the nucleus is very small compared to the size of the
